This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Everything is in “the cloud” now, except the cloud is a real place, and it’s in Northern Virginia.
For most of its short life, my Tesla Model 3 has aged beautifully. Since I bought the car, in 2019, it has received a number of new features simply by updating its software. My navigation system no longer just directs me to EV chargers along my route—it also shows me, in real time, how many plugs are free. With the push of a button, I can activate “Car Wash Mode,” and the Tesla will put itself in neutral and disable the windshield wipers.
Updated with new questions at 3:45 p.m. ET on October 21, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.
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On a road in Aurora, Colorado, lined with used-car dealers and pawnshops sits a tan, low-rise building called Mango House. Inside, among international-food stalls and ethnic-clothing shops, is a family-medicine clinic that serves a largely refugee and immigrant community.
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Dear James,
I’m a stepdad who wants nothing more than to be a good father to my stepson.
Armed Only with a Camera, the documentary chronicling the life of the late filmmaker Brent Renaud, premieres Tuesday on HBO. Renaud was the first Western journalist killed during the war in Ukraine. He was shot by Russian soldiers during the 2022 invasion while filming Ukrainian refugees with another photojournalist, Juan Arredondo, who was wounded in the attack.
We look at the influence of Trump’s top budget adviser and the architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, over the Trump administration’s policies and Trump himself. Vought is “the driving force behind the [government] shutdown” and “basically a second commander-in-chief, a shadow president,” says ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll, who spent months researching Vought for an extensive profile on the Office of Management and Budget director.
“We are under attack by our own federal government,” says Democratic Congressmember for Illinois Delia Ramirez about Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago. “What we’re seeing is an agency that has gone rogue, that has been emboldened and that thinks that they’re above the law.” She urges Americans to report and record ICE activity to strengthen future legal battles, “because what ICE is stating and what we’re seeing in the community in the streets is inconsistent.
Are the “cockroaches” Jamie Dimon spoke of really a private credit problem or are they a bit closer to home?
It may only be the beginning of a wider crackdown for the Wolverine State’s marijuana industry.
Next week’s rain might be the start of a sinkhole near you.
Bot-made listings are forcing homebuyers and professionals to ask themselves if this is a straight-up deceptive practice.
“Deserves to be called out,” says the president of the United States about a fawning magazine cover.
Despite the Covid experience, nations aren’t proving more willing to help each other or to dig deep to help poor countries.
Jeffrey Tucker, who elevated Covid contrarians now working for the health secretary, is building support for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The moves, to lower the cost of a drug prescribed to women going through IVF and boost employer coverage, follow Trump’s campaign promise to make fertility care more accessible.
States are worried Congress missed its opportunity to extend enhanced ACA subsidies and lower premiums before consumers start picking plans in a few weeks.
Troy Perry starts the gay/lesbian Metropolitan Community Church. A young lesbian is a regular at the San Francisco congregation when her friend gets sick.
Rescued archival audio takes listeners into the heart of an LGBTQ+ church during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s and ’90s San Francisco.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
Trump’s strength with Republicans on the economy could prove to be a boon for the GOP.
A survey from the liberal-leaning group Somos Votantes shows Latino voters are souring on the president.
Privately, aides concede voters remain uneasy about prices but argue their policies are beginning to turn things around.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Say what you will about Donald Trump’s effect on American civic life as a whole, but he’s done wonders for public participation. Voter turnout in the past few elections has reached record highs, for example.
The prompts read like tiny, abstract poems.
“A brutal storm off the coastal cliff. The clouds are formed into tubular formations and lightning strikes are never ending.”
I scroll; another appears:
“A male figure formed of gentle fire, his outline glowing with soft embers, approaches a female figure shaped from flowing water, her form glistening with ripples and fine mist. They move toward one another with calm grace, meeting in a warm embrace.
President Donald Trump’s plan to double the size of the ICE workforce has met a foe more powerful than any activist group. It is decimating new recruits at the agency’s training academy in Georgia. It is the ICE personal-fitness test.
More than a third have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency’s plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.
Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger was in charge of a Berlin Wall checkpoint on the evening of November 9, 1989, when a garbled televised press conference convinced thousands of East Berliners that they were allowed to cross into West Germany. People ran to the checkpoint. They started shouting at Jäger, telling him to open the barrier, even though no one had told him about any changes.
